Britain's broadband won't be the "best in Europe" by 2015

When the coalition government came into power in 2010, it didn't
take long before culture secretary Jeremy Hunt claimed that the UK
would have "the best superfast broadband network Europe by 2015".
Considering the UK wasn't even in the top ten at the time for
average broadband speeds, it was a bold decree.

The report that detailed how that would happen, Britain's Superfast Broadband Future, tried to make sense
of how, exactly, to define "best". It settled for a composite
ranking based on speed, price, coverage and there being a range of
ISPs for customers to choose from.

As reported on Wired.co.uk, Hunt recently made another speech
claiming that the UK's internet will be the "fastest" in Europe by
2015. That little switch from "best" to "fastest" is more than
a small semantic detail -- it's indicative of a change in what the
government is actually hoping to achieve.

The House of Lords Select Committee on Communications picked up
on this in their latest report from July 2012 (Broadband for all -- an alternative vision), because that
question of whether the UK's broadband will be the "best" is
important.

The target that the government set in 2010 for speed was quite
simple: 90 percent of households should have access to
"superfast" 24Mbps broadband by 2015, and every household across
the country should have access to at least 2Mbps
broadband.

The most recent figures from Ofcom -- from
2011 -- show 86 percent of the UK's households have access
to at least 2Mbps broadband, while around 60 percent of households
have access to "superfast" connections. More than 99 percent of the
population can access some form of ADSL, which is one of the best
records in the world.

But if you're wondering where Britain's fastest access ranks
compared to other countries, the latest Akamai web
report figures (which the government cites) place the UK rather
lower on the list -- at 16th in Europe and 25th globally. According
to Net Index, the UK is
21st in the world, with an average household download speed of
17.78Mbps.

Coverage
A glance at the breakdown section of Ofcom's figures demonstrates
the real problem with current UK broadband coverage. Outside of
urban areas, broadband access rapidly becomes patchy, as there
simply isn't an economic incentive for ISPs to pay for upgraded
infrastructure in places with fewer customers.

As with much of the infrastructure in the UK -- railways,
factories, telephone cables -- being the first in the world to
install them has been to the country's detriment in the long run.
Countries which industrialised later can bypass slow, expensive
upgrades. For example, South Korea didn't have to worry about
digging up hundreds of miles of copper cable, bit by bit, to slowly
increase speeds -- the Korean government just installed fibreoptic
cables from the start.

That's why the UK currently has a lopsided broadband
infrastructure. Private investment in faster broadband only arrives
in major cities and towns where there's a widespread hunger for
faster speeds, and the userbase to pay for it. It also
explains that arbitrary value of 24Mbps chosen as the definition of
a "superfast" speed. That's the speed limit in the areas with the
oldest copper cables.

In the most difficult areas to upgrade, that infrastructure
can't handle anything faster. Local exchanges are connected (except
in rare cases) by copper cables to local cabinets (those green
boxes on street corners), and the final loops from those cabinets
to individual houses are also copper. The upgrade schemes currently
taking place (such as BT's) involve replacing the loops between the
exchanges and the cabinets with fibreoptic cable, but leaving the
existing copper cable between the cabinets and the houses -- this
is known as fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), as opposed to fibre to the
home (FTTH) where the whole length is replaced.

FTTC vs FTTH
Long stretches of copper cable lose information as the signal
degrades over distance, hence the "superfast" being defined as
roughly the slowest maximum speed if the whole country enjoyed
upgrades to FTTC. That's why former BT chief technology
officer Peter Cochrane claimed that the government's "superfast"
broadband was " neither super nor fast".

While the vast upgrades that are taking place across the country
are no doubt necessary, they're only a part of the overall
infrastructure upgrade that would really be needed to future-proof
British broadband capacity. As Cochrane said, "if we put
20Mbps in, we'll be reengineering it within a few years."

When asked about BT's upgrade plans, a spokesperson for the
company said: "We firmly back the government's ambitions to
bring broadband to as many people as possible. We believe the mix
of technologies we're using -- and in the process of developing --
will lead to the most efficient way of reaching that goal." BT
is spending £2.5 billion of its own money to bring a combination of
FTTC and FFTH to two-thirds of the UK population by the end of 2014
(with 11 million people already within upgraded areas), which
should provide speeds of at least 50Mbps.

Public money
BT claims that, with the help of public money, the big gap between
two-thirds to 90 percent might be surmountable. The problem is,
when considering the sums earmarked to be spent on upgrading the
areas you'd imagine were easier to sort out, it makes the
government's Broadband UK (BDUK) subsidy fund seem almost derisory.

It's an £830m pot of money, which is to be allocated to
organisations who have applied for funding. £300 million of
the fund comes from the BBC's license fee, too, so budget cuts to
the national broadcaster are in part to help pay for rolling
broadband out to rural areas. It's important that those cuts aren't
for nothing, but you can see the range of schemes which have
received funding so far from BDUK on its website -- and many of these schemes will not be
future-proofed for speeds beyond 24Mbps, even if they manage to
increase coverage to 90 percent "superfast" (24Mbps) broadband
across the nation.

You can find references in Hunt's latest speech to the idea that
this FTTC rollout is a "temporary stepping stone", and
that "by 2016 fibre to the home will be available on demand to over
two thirds of the population." It's true, but it's a somewhat
deceptive way of putting it, because very few individuals will be
able to afford it. BT will charge its users the cost of extending
fibreoptic cable from local cabinets to their homes, or even small
businesses.

Essentially, the upgrade to "superfast" broadband appears
to be a synonym for only upgrading half of the network.

BT's network isn't the only option, of course. Virgin
Media's infrastructure offers an alternative, but it's closed to
other networks. Unlike BT's cabinets, Virgin has no obligation to
let other ISPs use its infrastructure. Plus, for now, Virgin Media
is focusing on increasing speeds for its existing network rather
than expanding into new areas.

A Virgin Media spokesperson told Wired.co.uk: "It's important to
focus efforts on narrowing the digital divide between urban areas
and the countryside, but with close to a billion pounds of public
subsidy looking likely to further strengthen an existing rural
monopoly, it's now vital every pound is clearly accounted for and
efficiently spent in a way that creates a genuine legacy of
future-proof, superfast broadband."

Alternatives
Alternative technologies are being trialled. Virgin Media has had
success with wireless broadcasting in rural areas, and a trial by
BT of its White Space technology -- where ISPs take advantage of
gaps in the television broadcasting spectrum that have arisen from
the digital switchover -- has proven relatively successful.

Satellite broadband, too, is an option, though it has a very
high latency compared to wired connections. However, there are no
large scale plans to bring these technologies to rural areas, or
even to make them commercially available, before the 2015
deadline.

The best?
So what does this mean for the government's claims of delivering
the "best" broadband network in Europe by 2015? Or even the
"fastest"?

Maybe we should go back to those metrics the government used in
2010 -- price, coverage, speed and market choice. It may surprise
many, but currently the UK has some of the best value
broadband in the world, let alone Europe -- 12th in the
world, according to Net Index, and there's not a lot in it at
the top. That isn't likely to change, because in most urban areas
of Britain there's a healthy market in ISPs offering different
packages.

As for speed, well, "superfast" 24Mbps is still short of
average speeds for several other European countries
right now. Bulgaria's average speed is 24Mbps, with
Romania, Sweden, Latvia, the Netherlands and Lithuania all having
faster speeds than that (as does Luxembourg, but we'll discount it
as it's so small). Other countries are likely to have caught up and
surpassed those speeds by 2015, too, as the EU pushes for universal
access to at least 30Mbps for all its citizens.

The caveat to that, of course, is that, some of those countries
have managed those faster speeds by making a distinct choice to
sacrifice coverage for overall speed, with broadband outside of
major cities nonexistent (and thus skewing the figures). The UK
does very well for its size when compared to other large nations in
covering a lot more people.

The main issue for Britain is the future-proofing of that
network -- the UK's internet infrastructure will be as fast as many
of the best, but in ten years will 80Mbps, or even 100Mbps, be fast
enough? Considering it'll take roughly that long for investment in
the new infrastructure now to pay off the costs, it's an important
consideration.

By the time 2015 rolls around the UK is likely to have broadband
that ranks among the best in Europe, but it's almost
impossible that it'll be the best on any single metric.
But certainly better than where we are today.

Comments

There are Towns such as Tavistock outside any funding nor on any roll-out plan to date. What is in Jeremy Hunt's promises so far by 2015 if BT decide not to invest? Absolute zero - there is nothing for Tavistock 'Gateway to Superfast Cornwall' except that title.

Tavistock Superfast Broadband

Aug 23rd 2012

We're too far from the exchange to get ADSL, which is annoying since some of our neighbours who are slightly closer can. Since my dad has a business, we've been able to get subsidised satellite broadband, but it's still around £35/month for 2mbps and terrible lag (making online gaming literally impossible, and skype is pretty terrible too). Also, it can stop working in heavy rain, which we get a lot in these parts, and it's unreliable as it occasionally stops working for no apparent reason. And they've recently imposed a 15GB FUP which we weren't told about when signing up.

Luke Alexander

Aug 24th 2012

Hunt had really better hope that they keep upgrading the big cities past 100Mbs to keep that average speed of 17Mbs and his place in his precious league tables. Of course he knows that by area the average would be more like 1.5Mbs once you get a few miles from the exchange into rural areas. Of course it wouldn't be so bad if someone actually wanted to connect the cabinets outside the town centers once they have been fibre enabled. BT and the goverment always seem to forget the C in FTTC.

Steve

Aug 25th 2012

It would be far better to give the funding to altnets like gigaclear who today have fibred up a village in Oxfordshire and delivered gigabit connections for virtually the same price as the villagers were paying for a miserable meg on copper. That would provide some much needed competition, and stop councils wasting our taxpayers money on cabinets so a few can go faster for a short time. The whole job will be to do again soon once everyone realises copper is so yesterday. A few dozen gigaclears dotted around the country would do far more good. BT will upgrade the cabinets anyway to stop virgin taking over their customers. They shouldn't get public money to do that.